


What night-rule now?

by Elsinore_and_Inverness



Category: Discworld
Genre: #Childhood, #Cockbill Street, #Havelock’s an Aquarius Quia Ego Sic Dico, #canon disordered eating, #philosophy of ruling, #”Disguise” and “Camouflage”, Gen, Latatian Puns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-05
Updated: 2020-05-05
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:00:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24013993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elsinore_and_Inverness/pseuds/Elsinore_and_Inverness
Summary: Vimes and Vetinari prior to Guards! Guards!
Relationships: Samuel Vimes & Havelock Vetinari
Comments: 6
Kudos: 44





	What night-rule now?

Cockbill Street had, through the years, a few of their own end up at the Assassins Guild, so it was not unheard of to see a boy in the white scholarship gown standing on the rooftops, even if he was covered in pollen from climbing trees on the other side of the river, blending in with the yellowed plaster walls, and standing face to the wind with his eyes closed. 

What was unusual was that he was a boy no one had ever seen before.   


Most of the children on the street left school at the age pupils started at the Assassins Guild. This would be a source of animosity if not for the sheer redundancy of saying that students at a school for Assassins had ‘never done an honest day’s work in their life.’

“Who’s that up there?” asked Sam Vimes, being the only one who had seen the student Assassin. 

Doreen took a few steps back so she could see up into the rooftops. “Looks like Lady Meserole’s ward,” she said. Doreen had Aspirations and kept up with these sort of things. And said “ward” instead of “nephew.”

“Is he scholarship or charity or wearing someone else’s uniform?” Even back then Vimes thought like a policeman. 

“Scholarship,” Doreen said.

Lupine Wonse looked up from tormenting Willy Scuggins, aghast. “What did he do?” he asked with horrified interest.

“Vell,” Doreen lowered her voice to spooky-story mode and affected an Uberwaldean accent, “rumor has it zat he helped his aunt track down the man zat had tried to kill father and ven she caught up to him she asked the boy vut should be done with him and the boy vent and pulled out a book with a drawing of—you know zat machine zay use to cut the heads off chickens?”

“The Chicken Killing Machine?” Lupine said, eyes wide.

“Zat’s the one.”

”They don’t give people scholarships for pointing at a drawing,” said Sam Vimes, the blackboard monitor.

When he looked back up at the roof the pollen-covered boy was gone.

***

The new Patrician had been in office for a little over a year. 

He still looked like his predecessor, but he was thinner than he had been the previous month when Vimes had been dragged along to help the old Captain complain about funding cuts. Vimes wondered if the man had been ill. His gaze was colder and his sentences more coherent than those of Snapcase and Winder.

Vimes was now the Captain of the Night Watch, which was in plummeting decline since the Thieves Guild had become a Fixture of City Life.

“Why don’t you just put us out of our misery?” he said bitterly, knowing somehow that this new Patrician, far more dangerous than previous ones, would not take this as a suggestion. 

“Because you have a job to do.” The Patrician twisted one of his rings around his finger. “Si non confectus non reficiat.”

“Vires me deficiunt,” Vimes said. 

The Patrician raised both eyebrows, not expecting to have been answered in Latatian. “Vimes ne me deficiunt.”

It was lucky that Sam Vimes could not remember this Patrician’s surname because if this conversation continued in this vein he would have ended up calling him a cow. 

Lupine Wonse entered the room then. He was in full ingratiation mode and Sam thought that with a less clever Patrician he would already be the one running the show. 

Clever. That was how people thought of the Patrician in those days. Clever enough to survive and solve problems in a haphazard sort of way. Tax the rat farms. Pure inspiration, surely? But then he was making the Beggars and Thieves and Seamstresses official Guilds. That was a kind of clever that people hadn’t figured out yet. “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it” has an invisible rider. “If it is. Do.”

***

Three years later at around two in the morning there was a muffled cry followed by silence and the slow breaking of wood as someone fell through rotten scaffolding in an alleyway.

Vimes went to investigate. The man that had fallen through the decaying platform wore a mask. His rail-thin body was covered in a cloak the color of steel wool.

His eyes flickered as though he was fighting for consciousness. From the way he was lying, Vimes could tell his he hadn’t hit his head. This was someone who spent his nights in the city’s upper canopy and knew how to fall safely.

The Captain of the Watch recognized those eyes like glacial ice. 

“We’re going to rest here for a few minutes. And then we’re going to the watch house and having cocoa.”

“Don’t take off the mask,” the man said weakly.

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” Sam thought about adding ‘your Lordship,’ but decided against it. 

On the way to the watch house Vimes said “You came from the direction of the Palace. I understand the budget is tight up there, and I come from a place where lots of things are valued higher than food. Are you getting enough to eat?”

“The Patrician pays his employees very well.” That was a no, then. 

This kind of irrational self-deprivation probably made more sense to Sam than to most other people. Ensuring that food wasn’t poisoned was an ordeal requiring several cooks and food tasters and hours per day of attention for even the simplest dishes. And Vetinari liked be alone. He was born under the sign of the Pitcher (or Bucket) which, according to the Almanack, meant that he liked the concept of _people_ more than he actually liked people.

“Someone that pays their employees well should look after themselves because odds are that whoever takes over won’t.”

“I don’t like him very much, but I hope that he’s made an impact.” This is the kind of thing people only say when they’re wearing a mask and pretending the person they’re talking to doesn’t recognize them. It was also excellent double-barbed angling for opinions. 

Vimes half rolled his eyes. This had the same impact as rolling his eyes but allowed the benefit of the doubt. 

“So... You come here often?” Sam gestured to the city skyline. 

“Not as much as I would like.”

Once inside they drank their cocoa in companionable silence, feeling the nighttime city breathing around them. Listening to the wind and the occasional scream. The ex-Assassin had removed his mask to drink, but compensated by pulling the hood of his cloak low over his face. 

Forty minutes later he melted into the night.

**Author's Note:**

> He definitely got a scholarship for pointing at a drawing


End file.
